Have you ever felt like you relate your low points to experiences from your past when you were a child?
Do you ever feel like complaining or blaming something from the past not as an adult but as a child?
Do you feel your outburst wasn’t the cause of your recent events but it came from some far place back in time?
This could be signs of childhood trauma. To learn how you can heal from childhood trauma. You must first understand what trauma is.
What is trauma?
Trauma is any experience or set of experiences that go beyond your ability to cope. Trauma is typically presented with stress. Where there are many types of stress, trauma is usually related to toxic stress. A major sign of toxic stress is that you don’t have your support system to help you cope up with the trauma.
Types of trauma
There are many types of traumas. A few worth mentioning are:
1. Acute Trauma
Acute trauma is any trauma that you go through once. You can get over it if you have a healthy support system. Examples of acute trauma can be a car accident. For instance, once when I had a car accident my mum told me to drive the car again. She told me to park the car aside right after the accident. That’s how I overcame the fear of driving again after the trauma of the accident.
2. Repetitive Trauma
Repetitive trauma can occur because of incidents that take place again and again. A good example of repetitive trauma is when you have to go through multiple surgeries. In such cases, if you don’t have support to recover and cope, you can land into PTSD which is post-traumatic stress disorder. This can leave you in a fight or flight mode all the time.
3. Historical Trauma
Historical trauma tends to come from events or incidents that took place in the past. These are not necessarily on an individual but the entire societies or nations can be suffering from them. Events like war, slavery, and massacre leave marks of trauma on generations for years to come.
4. Inter-generational Trauma
Your parents have a lifetime of their own experiences. In their brains, they are already coding what is right and what is not. Parents usually pass that down to their children. For instance, if your mom had gone through sexual assault herself, she will fear you going out of the house in a short skirt. She might condition you to have that fear as well.
Environmental effects on your trauma
All in all, your environment amplifies your behavior. If you are living in household chaos, your chances of coming out of that trauma become thin. You really want to be different but you have no choice but to go back to that environment again and again.
High-risk and self-destructive behavior
People usually consider excessive alcohol, sex, drugs, and smoking to be high-risk or self-destructive behavior. But any behavior can be classified into high-risk behavior depending upon how you use it.
It also depends on what type of results are you seeing because of that behavior. If you are getting involved in stealing or distancing from friends, isolating yourself from family, eating a lot, or not eating at all, your chances of damage are high.
Moreover, it is also common for people, especially girls, to stay in an abusive and toxic relationship because of high-risk behavior.
How to heal from childhood trauma as a motherless daughter?
As a motherless daughter, you could have gone through very traumatic experiences from any of the aforementioned types of traumas. Here is a step-by-step breakdown of what you can do to heal from childhood trauma as a motherless daughter.
1. Recall it
I’m sure recalling your traumatic experiences is not a very difficult job. You are probably doing it already. But this time find a quiet corner where you won’t be disturbed. Sit on the ground and hold yourself together. Try to rewind everything that happened. Try to feel everything emotionally and physically. Note what response your body is sending. Is it tingling, is it a rush of emotions, is it fluctuating your heartbeats?
2. Acceptance – feel your feelings
You have your feeling attached to that traumatic experience, accept them. Be vulnerable with yourself. Attach whatever emotion you want to the response that you are getting. If you can’t name your emotion right go through a list of emotions before you start this exercise.
3. Regulating Emotions and Emotional Freedom
To regulate your emotions you need to relive the moment and accept your response to it. Accept yourself and your emotions even if they are hard to embrace. Love yourself despite experiencing your own anger, fear, or sadness.
Emotions usually get bottled up inside of us, regulating them in your body will help them come out. It’s okay to embrace yourself as a human being. You weren’t perfect at the moment, but then, no one can be.
4. Seeking help
You can seek help on your experience once you know what you felt and how you felt it. Seeking help can be different for different people. If you think you need a support system, discuss it with your family and friends. Or if you think it’s psychological, seek help from a therapist. If you think you can manage it with some effort at your end, start right away. Journal, read, or go for cognitive therapy. You can even look into energy healing, reiki, or yoga.
More: 9 Ways to Get Rid of Anxiety Immediately
5. Reparenting your inner child
Remember you were only a child. There is so much you could have done for yourself then. But there is a lot you can do for yourself right now. You need to reparent your inner child and that starts with you accepting the wisdom behind your traumatic experience.
Your trauma can teach you a lot of stuff. You would definitely be a different person if this trauma was not there in your life. Needless to say, if it was there in your life, it had something for you. Discover that and work towards it. Give yourself everything you think you needed as a child. Give yourself the security, trust, confidence, care, love, and kindness.
More: 4 Simple Steps to Rewriting Your Story
6. Revisit the message it left behind
Revise the message your trauma left behind for you. Share it with others if you can. If you can’t, just write it down for your future self. For when you feel it is drowning you again. If your trauma is associated with someone hurting you, write them a letter. Don’t send it to them but merely writing it all out is an important step in healing.
7. Let go
Love yourself enough to let go of the negativity inside you. Sit down and visualize all the unwanted energy leaving your body. Empty your mind so that new and empowering thoughts can make a home inside.
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